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Home › News & Publications › Press Releases › PRESS RELEASE: As part of its "Know and Defend Your Rights" Campaign Centro Presente will visit 200 Latino businesses in the East Boston and Somerville areas to distribute information to support the immigrant community.

PRESS RELEASE: As part of its "Know and Defend Your Rights" Campaign Centro Presente will visit 200 Latino businesses in the East Boston and Somerville areas to distribute information to support the immigrant community.

Submitted by pmontes on March 6, 2017 - 6:30pm

PRESSRELEASE

As part of its “Know and Defend Your Rights” Campaign Centro Presente will visit 200 Latino businesses in the East Boston and Somerville areas to distribute information to support the immigrant community.

Press ContactPatricia Montes, 617 483 2937

Boston, MA. As part of its “Meet and Defend Your Rights” campaign Centro Presente will visit 200 Latino businesses in the East Boston and Somerville area to distribute information to support the immigrant community. This activity consists of identifying at least 200 Latino businesses that will stand in solidarity with the immigrant community and commit to distribute information about the constitutional, civil and human rights of this vulnerable population.

“We hope to have the support of Latino businesses in the area. Most of their clients are immigrants who are poorly informed about their rights,” said Patricia Montes, Executive Director of Centro Presente. “The information is very basic. People need to know, that they should not open the door of their home, if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, local police or the FBI do not have a warrant issued by a judge; that they should remain silent, have the right to speak to a lawyer and make a call if they are arrested, among other rights.”

President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to apply immigration laws more aggressively, unleashing the federal government’s power to find, detain and deport undocumented immigrants regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes or not.

The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a series of guidance documents that make President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration and border security a significant change in the way immigration enforcement is enforced. These documents revealed the broad scope of the president’s ambitions: to further persecute undocumented immigrants as dangerous criminals, to commission local police officers to comply with new federal immigration policies, to deprive immigrants of privacy rights, to build new detention facilities, to discourage asylum seekers and, ultimately, to accelerate deportations.